The Austin City Limits Ticket Crash of 2013

Day One of 2012's Austin City Limits fest. With the festival's expansion, hundreds of tickets for ACL's second weekend are available on the secondary market.

KUT

Update: Austin City Limits Music Festival organizers just announced tickets are officially sold out for their second weekend. But tickets are still available on the secondary market, although they're selling fast there too.

Original story (Oct. 4): Don’t have tickets for the 2013 Austin City Limits Music Festival? Surprisingly, you’re in luck.

It’s the first year the popular fest has expanded to two weekends. And while tickets for this weekend are officially sold out on the ACL website, and next weekend’s three-days passes still retail for $225 – hundreds of passes are now available for either weekend from ticket reseller StubHub, starting at around $100. And that’s not even taking Craigslist into account, where there's a similar buyer’s market.

“What it suggests – at least so far – is the people who priced the tickets initially seemed to have forgotten that the second weekend is a novelty, and maybe there wouldn’t be quite so much demand for a second weekend,” says Daniel Hamermesh, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Lets say this weekend turns out to be a great success, people love the music and think that next weekend’s is going to be as good – it wouldn’t surprise me if those prices went back up again,” Hamermesh says. “You never know. If this weekend turns out to be a bomb, my guess is those will go down."

Austin City Limits sure leaves a big financial footprint: In 2012, the festival was estimated to have generated over $100 million in local economic impact, according to a city-endorsed study. This year, ACL is expected to draw tens of thousands to Austin over the next two weeks. Twenty-five percent of festival participants come from outside of Texas and around the world, with most U.S. visitors will come from California, and most international visitors arriving from Mexico.

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No more leaks: the full Austin City Limits Music Festival lineup is out. Sure, British rock band Muse had accidentally confirmed their performance during an interview with a Montreal radio station . Over the weekend other band names like Portugal. The Man , Neko Case and D’Angelo appeared on beer coozies and Topo Chico bottle caps around town . And last week cheeky ads were placed in the Austin Chronicle (“For a little Fun . Call 555- ACL -FEST”). But just after midnight this morning, the full lineup was finally unveiled.

Update : Shortly after Ian Dille’s Slate article appeared online, he received a handwritten apology from Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler. The band's PR company “forwarded me a handwritten note from Win Butler apologizing for the graffiti and explaining that it was supposed to be put up in chalk or water-soluble paint,” Dille tells KUT News. “And somewhere along the line, someone started using spraypaint. He said it was hard to control all the small details of such a large project.” (Read the letter below.)

The Austin City Council just voted unanimously to allow C3 Presents to expand the Austin City Limits Music Festival at Zilker Park to two weekends next year. The resolution states that City Manager Marc Ott is encouraged “to negotiate and execute an agreement with C3 Presents to include an additional weekend event for the Austin City Limits Music Festival,” beginning next year. The resolution had included language that would allow for adding additional event days at Auditorium Shores but council members decided to take that part out – likely owing to controversy over whether a Formula One-related concert would be allowed at Auditorium Shores the weekend of a major Junior League of Austin fundraiser .